[Stoves] "Those of us who believe that the WBT is critical to stove improvement"

Fri Dec 15 23:42:19 CST 2017

Ron:

I believe Xavier's reference to Gates and $30.5 million was to a news item
that Tom Miles picked up about a year ago and we had some discussion on it
here.

The basic fact is, there is no quantified evidence of disease reduction due
to the massive population switch from solid fuels to gas and electricity in
the last 100 years. By my crude estimate, some 4 billion people lived
through that transition - with limited "stacking" - in the rich as well as
poor countries over the hundred years; about a half of them have died.

Of course, these 3-4 billion people who made a partial or complete
transition to "clean fuels" have or had lived roughly 200 billion
life-years. Some 500 million of them died in the 26 years GBD has been
around (1990-2016) and lived some 30 billion life-years.

How many of these 500 million deaths were "premature deaths" - as defined
by IHME now - and how many of those deaths plus disability were assigned to
household air pollution from solid fuels? On what basis?

And whatever those "premature deaths" were (there were many post-mature
deaths as well, depending on the age cutoff), how much were their deaths
DELAYED and diseases avoided because of the transition to clean fuels?

There is no data, no theory, no estimates to prove that the reduction of
household air pollution from solid fuels in the last 100 years did this or
that to mortality and morbidity.

There is no evidentiary basis for WHO's computations - I have referred you
to the WHO methodology for HAP GBD in 2012; they haven't made any revisions
since (IHME has done some) - nor is there any basis for Gold Standard
claiming that reduction in HAP concentrations for a few days' monitoring
confers this or that aDALY.

So, millions of dollars are being spent on finding a proof for something
that has already been asserted.

All that money could have gone for technical R&D and improved technical
design for cookstoves (whether or not measured by WBT) and marketing them
to users ready to change.

My reading of Secretary Clinton's initiative is that she simply could not
have found any USG money for cookstove R&D and supply chains in the
developing countries. All she could do is  hope that GACC could raise money
from other sources to do such work (which  it has done) while USG money had
to go to US researchers - in or via EPA, HHS/CDC. Which is why lots of USG
money went into research on "health" benefits from "clean" cookstoves,
almost none on technical R&D or stove adoption projects.

Which is also why GACC - under pressure to show that "clean cookstoves"
meant results in measurable "health benefits" - was unfortunately but
understandably forced to become a marketing agent for LPG and to push WHO
to set SDG 3.9.1 metric from % of household using solid fuels for cooking
to mortality (not premature mortality) attributed to the use of solid
fuels.

To WHO and hence to GACC, solid fuels are by definition polluting.

Since EPA cannot spend much money "health impacts" research in developing
countries, and HHS/CDC weren't coming out with great deal of evidence,
Gates Foundation was pulled in to fund more of this research.

I wonder if it was Gates Foundation that sponsored WHO's work on indoor air
pollution (amounting to assuming worldwide uniformity in PM2.5
concentrations from solid fuels), estimates of global and national burdens
of disease., and the hurried preparation of literature reviews (see here
<http://www.who.int/indoorair/guidelines/hhfc/evidence/en/>) in order to
justify publication of guidelines for Household Fuel Combustion - Solid
Fuels, claiming these guidelines "are informed by the best available
evidence, including newly commissioned or published, systematic reviews."

Anybody working on biomass combustion in developing country households
should have been anxious about the PM2.5 emission reduction targets set by
WHO, because they effectively rule out most biomass stoves from Tier 4,
which is what GACC wants to market via the "implementation science"
approach. To me, this was an ideological war against solid fuels - coal or
biomass. What WHO claims "best available evidence" is not good enough to be
taken seriously in policy development or biomass stove R&D.

Stacks are very carefully set against the proponents of biomass-using
household cookstoves and in favor of gas and electricity. Having asserted,
without evidence or theory, that "clean fuels" confer "health benefits", of
course hundreds of millions of dollars of US money - government or Gates
Foundation or many other sources of health research - have to be spent over
the next 25 years for quantitative proof that this assertion.

Bright careers for health researchers and M&E experts looking for needles
in haystacks.

While serious stove researchers and entrepreneurs get almost no money.

I hope you would look into these allegations and protest against the
anti-poor, anti-biosolid propaganda in the name of health.

Nikhil

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nikhil Desai
(US +1) 202 568 5831
*Skype: nikhildesai888*

On Fri, Dec 15, 2017 at 7:21 PM, Ronal W. Larson <rongretlarson at comcast.net>
wrote:

> Hi all:
>
> See below
>
> On Dec 15, 2017, at 2:45 PM, Xavier Brandao <xvr.brandao at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Dear Nikhil, Ron,
>
> Nikhil, this is probably the third time you are asking me that same
> question:
> « What are the proofs that the WBT did harm anybody? »
>
> And my answer hasn’t changed, so I’ll tell you for the third time: « I
> have no proof, there are no proofs, because it has never been studied ».
> Ask me that same question again, I’ll answer the same thing.
>
>
> *[RWL1:  I wasn’t in this, but I like Nikhil’s question - and not
> surprised it wasn’t answered.*
>
>
> If you have 30.5 million dollars from the Gates Foundation to do a 5-year
> longitudinal study, please be my guest and lead the way.
> And let’s wait for the report conclusions to contemplate if maybe we
> should act.
>
> *[RWL2:  This makes no sense.  I must have missed something about Gates
> and $30.5 Million.*
>
>
> In the absence of that, we need to think carefully, and act carefully. But
> we need to act.
>
> *[RWL3:  Yup.  Dropping the WBT is one good example of something to avoid,
> when the vast majority of users are expressing no concern (and I will be
> reading the nice list of articles you provided. Thanks for the list - which
> I don’t recall being given before.*
>
>
> Nikhil, Ron, it’s my turn to ask you questions:
> ·         There’s a loophole in the emission testing system of
> Volkswagen. It allows cheating. But, you say we have no way to clearly know
> how emissions are harmful to the population. So, we shouldn’t care if the
> engine is clean or not, and if the test is unreliable or not, because we
> don’t know the effects of emissions on health anyways.
> So should we change the system or not? Should we ask Volkswagen to use a
> testing system that is reliable?
>
> *[RWL4:  Volkswagen got clobbered; they got away with nothing.*
>
> ·         The NASA realize some of its calculations basically find that 1
> + 1 = 3. Those calculations are actually present in many of their research
> projects, for various technologies. But they have no way to know how much
> impact it had on the projects, because the projects are still going, there
> are technologies being developed, all is seemingly quite fine.
> Should the mistake be corrected or not?
>
> *[RWL5:  I know of no example of NASA coming up with 3 instead af 2.
> Yours?*
>
>
> I have an other question for both of you:
> ·         How do you measure the impact of the unreliability of the WBT?
> Do you have a methodology?
>
> *[RWL6:  I see no reason to measure the unreliability of the WBT (when it
> meets my standards) - but sure there have to be standard methods. Standard
> deviations are already given.   What would you propose.?*
>
>
> *Ron*
>
>
> Best,
>
> Xavier
>
>
> <https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=emailclient> Garanti
> sans virus. www.avast.com
> <https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=emailclient>
>
>
>
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